Girls for sale...at McDonalds

I recently returned from 11 days in Thailand where I had the privilege to get to know some awesome people & join them in bringing light to a dark place. I wrote while I was there about our prayer walks & how they impacted me. The night after I wrote that, we got to go on outreach into the red light district. For the safety of those living & working in Bangkok, I can't tell you who I was with or even what part of the city I was in (secret spy stuff! lol). But I can tell you what I saw & what I learned.
After some awesome prayer & worship on a balcony overlooking the city, we broke into two teams and headed out into the dark, damp streets of Thailand's capitol. My group ended up sitting in a coffee shop. We didn't speak to anyone but Jesus, each other & our waitress. Why a coffee shop, you ask? You probably have some image in your mind when I say "red light district"; something like a slimy street with bright lights and women for sale. But in Bangkok we found girls for sale at a coffee shop...and at McDonald's. I don't know what your favorite coffee shop or local McDonald's is like but I'm betting there aren't girls openly for sale in them. In certain parts of Bangkok, after dark, girls are for sale everywhere. So we went to a coffee shop to pray for those girls waiting in that coffee shop for customers. We prayed for their customers too. We also went with a lady that will be returning to that area to eventually become a familiar face and hopefully a ray of hope to those girls.
I learned that night and that week in Bangkok that ending human trafficking is not always dramatic or instant. Rescue is not always police kicking down doors in a raid (which, done the right way, can be a good thing but that is a story for another day). Often rescue is a process and a journey. Sometimes love whispers quietly under the noise, "someone cares, you are not forgotten, you are worth rescuing, you are worthy of unconditional love." Just like Jesus stopped for that one woman at the well (John 4), love in Bangkok's red light district looks like stopping to pray for the women for sale in that coffee shop, or at McDonald's, or on the street corner.